xxxiii, 1212 pages : 27 cm

Based on the award-winning six-volume work by Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition, presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive history of Western music available. Distinctive features: Offers a unique focus on the people behind music history; places musical works within their larger cultural, social, and political contexts, providing a compelling narrative of music history; covers music of all eras along with a special emphasis on the most studied works of the past 200 years; improves critical thinking by offering differing perspectives on how the Western musical canon developed; builds listening and analysis skills through comprehensive discussion of key works; includes helpful learning and study tools (timelines, maps, musical examples and diagrams, chapter summaries, key terms, study questions, and a glossary) [Publisher description]

Includes bibliographical references (pages 1161-1168) and index

The first literate repertory in Western music : Gregorian chant -- Secular and cathedral music in the High Middle Ages -- The Ars nova : musical developments in the fourteenth century -- Island and mainland : toward a Pan-European style -- A perfected art : church polyphony in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries -- After perfection : pressures for change -- Humanism and the birth of opera -- Music travels : trends in Italy, Germany, France, and England -- The height of Italian dominance : opera seria and the Italian concerto style -- Class of 1685 (I) : the instrumental music of Bach and Handel -- Class of 1685 (II) : the vocal music of Handel and Bach -- Mid-eighteenth-century stylistic changes : from Bach's sons to the comic style -- Concert life lifts off : Haydn -- The composer's voice : Mozart -- The emergence of romanticism -- Beethoven -- Opera in the age of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Weber -- Private art : Schubert and inwardness -- Romantic spectacles : from virtuosos to grand opera -- Literary musicians -- Music imported and exported -- Musical politics at mid-century : historicism and the New German School -- Class of 1813 : Wagner and Verdi -- Slavic harmony and disharmony -- The musical museum and the return of the symphony -- Dramatic alternatives : exoticism, operetta, and verismo -- Early Austro-German modernism : Mahler, Strauss, and Schoenberg -- Modernism in France -- National monuments -- Neoclassicism and 12-tone music -- Interwar currents : the roaring twenties -- Music and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Western Europe -- Music and politics in America and Allied Europe -- Starting from scratch : music in the aftermath of World War II -- Changes in the sixties and seventies -- "Many streams" : millenium's end

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